Surely, I thought, Thiessen would take the lead in demanding that the government “get tough” with the would-be terrorists

Surely, I thought, Thiessen would take the lead in demanding that the government “get tough” with the

would-be terrorists, declare them enemy combatants, and have them waterboarded to get all the details

about their group. Recall his reaction to the last major terror attempt in Michigan–the failed

Christmas Day airline bombing plot by the “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Thiessen

excoriated the Obama administration repeatedly for treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal, reading him

his Miranda rights, and failing to waterboard him for information. Given all this, how could Thiessen

fail to be outraged by the government’s intolerably lax response to the Michigan bombing plot?

Yet today’s Thiessen column brings no mention of the terror plot; instead, it is a rather dry piece on

the Nevada Senate race lacking all of the passion that Thiessen brings to his praises of torture. What

caused him to suddenly lose interest in Keeping America Safe from terrorists?

The simplest explanation for the discrepancy is this: Abdulmutallab is a dark-skinned Muslim with an “

Arab-sounding” name, while the Michigan Nine are right-wing white Christian militants with Anglo-Saxon

names. (Before anyone claims that the difference is that the Michigan Nine are U.S. citizens and

Abdulmutallab isn’t, recall that Thiessen and his allies also supported declaring U.S. citizen Jose

Padilla an enemy combatant and holding him indefinitely without charges.) It appears that Thiessen’s

enthusiasm for “enhanced interrogation techniques” only lasts as long as the suspects in question are

Muslims.